When I stole Tamerlane I also stole a box cutter
& I milked the breasts of the cow
found her loose & lost upon the Steppe
I begin to cut upwards through the udders.
Milk, we had milk.

She can feel the shirt being stretched,
my hand firmly keeping her place,
the slow release of the pressure of the cloth,
how it is falling away,
tearing in two like twins on the stump of an Axolotl.

blade tickles her skin
and no more black & white patches papa.
The shirt falls into two pieces.
skin is pale and colourless.
her belly is without a mark.

white is fulsome; it comes from bones,
from her chugging milk,
from sleeping nothing to ten hours a night,
from her work as a mortician.
I can see her veins, how they pump in askance.
I can see them rise through my touch.

She is blotted with freckles.
There are two moles above her navel,
one lies just above the other like mating fish
They appear like puncture holes.
She does not inject into her chest. She does not inject at all.

I take the heavy ribbon that joins the cup together
and pulling it toward me I cut it in one slip of the blade.
they leave fiery red indents and an exacting relief.
Like a shoal of hatchling redfish they pattern her skin.
The fourth stripe does its job,
her nose whistles in pain in place of a scream.